Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Edition: COVID-19 - January 2021 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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W ith critical shortages of personal protective equipment during the pandemic and a manufacturing industry that can't keep up with the staggering demand from healthcare organizations, leaders of outpatient surgical facilities are using nimble and unorthodox thinking to ensure their staffs have the gear they need to protect them- selves and their patients. • Smart ordering strategies. The pandemic made "normal" purchasing practices all but obso- lete. Some facilities ordered the same amount of PPE, regardless of case volume. "Looking back, one thing we did right was to continue ordering the same amount of PPE during the period when we were only performing cases that were deemed emergent," says Greg DeConciliis, PA-C, CASC, administrator at Boston Out-Patient Surgical Suites, Waltham, Mass. "That allowed us to build up a good supply for when we reopened." The idea came from the facility's PPE vendor, an invaluable resource Mr. DeConciliis says facility leaders should lean on during the pandemic. Keeping abreast of the trends in other countries and making critical purchasing decisions early on helped some facilities weather the storm. "We realized well before the virus hit the U.S. that the supply chain would most likely be affected due to the virus shutting down areas of China — where the vast majority of our supplies were manu- 10 • S U P P L E M E N T T O O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 Proven Strategies for Managing PPE Facilities are getting creative to maintain adequate levels of personal protective equipment despite nationwide shortages. CRISIS LEVELS The CDC permits the limited reuse of N95 masks when conventional strategies are not enough to maintain adequate supply levels. Yale New Haven Health Adam Taylor | Senior Associate Editor

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